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The Philadelphia Inquirer today carries an interesting piece on the 50th anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a single basketball game. It carries a shocking disclosure that this historic accomplishment was not universally accepted as a tour de force. Many considered Chamberlain, at 7 foot 1, a freak of nature who actually was hurting the game. After Wilt’s 100-point outing against the Knicks (in Hershey, Pa.), the Philadelphia Warriors went to Madison Square Garden to again face the New York club. Interest was low. Only half of the 18,496 seats were sold.

Why is time and perspective required to understand the relevant and important?

Overlooked

I once worked at a newspaper in north Florida that had won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1967, long before I arrived. The winning photo was of a lineman up on a telephone pole. He had been shocked by an electrical surge and had passed out. His safety belt kept him hanging, enabling an apprentice lineman to climb up and give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The photo was taken by Rocco Morabito and entitled, “The Kiss of Life.”

From the stories that were told, the photo ran on an inside page and of only modest size.

Can anyone recall instances where something historic or significant was overlooked or underappreciated until much later?

Like this:

Yesterday I stood in line with hundreds of people waiting to see a show by an artist who, while alive, sold only one painting.

The “Van Gogh Up Close” exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum was a collection of paintings done in the last four years of the artist’s life. Many were completed at an asylum where he was being treated for mental illness.

In the context of his time (the late 1800s), his work was revolutionary. It was unacceptable – almost a joke — to the majority of the established art world. Vincent Van Gogh, in his life, was a failure. It is a sad thing that greatness has to suffer in its time because it is so far ahead of its time.

The rest of us are so slow to catch up.

“This was done by a free mind,” my wife, an artist and teacher, said. “My young students can do work like this.”

Van Gogh self-portrait

She did not mean they reach Van Gogh’s level of artistry, craft and creativity. She meant that like Van Gogh their minds are unshackled.

It takes time to shackle a mind, but in the end they get locked down pretty tight.

In many ways, the reaction to new art is like the reaction to great scientific discovery, which is said to have three stages:

Like this:

An old chum called the other day. He’s the kind of guy who has retained the quirks and traits of youth while transforming into something foreign.

We don’t see much of each other anymore; it’s usually by chance at the supermarket. He’s had more than a few troublesome twists in his life, and they seem to get worse with the years.

He doesn’t have a TV and he called to ask if he could come over to watch Jeremy Lin play basketball. Lin is a guard for the New York Knicks; an undrafted, unheralded Harvard grad who came off the bench and is credited with putting his team on a winning streak, and doing it with style. As an Asian-American, his presence in the NBA makes him stand out.

“I don’t remember you being a basketball fan,” I said.

“I’m not,” he answered. “But this guy is a sensation … and he’s a Christian.”

I paused.

“Aren’t most of the NBA players Christian?” I asked.

He paused.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the dominant religion in America is Christianity. I assume the majority of the NBA players are Christian.”

“Jeremy Lin practices his faith,” my old friend said.

My inclination was to start an argument, asking if it was his Christian duty to judge the entire NBA.

But I didn’t.

I let it go and told him I’d to be happy to watch the next televised Knicks game with him.

“As long as it’s not on Sunday,” he said. He won’t watch TV on the Sabbath. (Would he think less of Lin for playing on the Sabbath?)

Afterward, I pondered his use of the word “faith,” which from my perspective on language I find odd. Why do Christians and member of other religions need to have faith? In the secular life we either believe something or we don’t, or maybe we admit we just don’t know. A Republican who claims lower taxes spur economic growth doesn’t require faith.

He or she simply believes it.

Why can’t Jeremy Lin and my friend just believe in what they espouse – that Christ is the divine savior who rose from the dead? Needing faith suggests doubt.

“Faith is believing something you know ain’t true,” Mark Twain said.

I have no doubt in my spiritual beliefs. That’s because they are my own. I’ve no need to take the dogma of others and cram it into my value system. I’m comfortable discarding what I don’t like or what doesn’t seem logical.

My religion is my own. I’ve crafted it.

In a piece I’m writing, I recommend others do the same. And I offer my view of a creator who has put the universe in motion based on a complex probability formula that ensures both free will and a pre-determined outcome.

The plan operates on its own, like a machine. There is no divine intervention. No corrections or adjustments. God does not help the Jews in battle.

After all, why would a perfect being have to intervene in something it created perfectly? That suggests imperfection.

Comments on this idea are appreciated and could help with the direction of my writing. I’d especially like to hear from Christians, of which I claim to be one.

Like this:

Bloomberg Business week reports that a couple of Brits were picked up at the Los Angeles airport by Homeland Security after tweeting that they were going to “destroy America” (read: party it down) and dig up the body of Marilyn Monroe. They were detained for five hours.

Fewer and fewer people today want their tax dollars to go to the poor. According to the New York Times, their wish is coming true. The government safety net established to keep people from poverty is going through a shift. Its newer mission is to support the middle class.

“The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.”

Interestingly, many members of the middle class who are getting the money oppose government handouts.

“They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it,” the Times says. “They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.”

Some of the people interviewed, when asked to discuss the inconsistency between reality and their political beliefs, cried.

Said one:

“You have to help and have compassion as a people, because otherwise you have no society, but financially you can’t destroy yourself. And that is what we’re doing.”

Like this:

Each time this year, TCM – the cable movie channel – presents, “31 Days of Oscar.” I happened to have tuned in when it was showing the 1961 film, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” I had never seen it. From the beginning, it was easy to tell this film is not only very good, it is very special and unique, with a strong, unusual perspective and a universal message.

I had been expecting anti-German propaganda.

Directed by Stanley Kramer, the film is studded with stars: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland – even a young William Shatner pops up. The story is about the post-war trials in Germany. Top Nazis have already been prosecuted, and the film focuses on the trial of three judges who approved Nazi-ordered sterilizations (read castrations).

Here is the interesting part, as reported on the Internet Movie Database site: Clift was having an extremely difficult time remembering his lines, so the director told him to ad lib, and that his confusion would ad to the confusion the character was going through under cross examination.

God did that work.

Clift usually cut his hair short after each movie, and didn’t make another until it grew back. In this film, there was no time for it to grow back.

It tracks and records you, follows you around, knows where you have been, what you like, who your friends are. It can predict what you are likely to do.

There is a story circulating that a person with good credit was denied a mortgage because his friends in the digital world were un-creditworthy. You know, birds of a feather.

True? Don’t know. But certainly possible.

Now it seems people with information to protect are taking great steps to secure it when they go abroad. The New York Times this morning describes the precautions taken by a China expert at the Brookings Institute when he travels to that country. The account says such measures are now commonplace for government and business officials.

“He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings ‘loaner’ devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.”

At home, the average person’s privacy is compromised for marketing purposes. Someone wants to sell you something. It’s not a pleasant idea, but most can live with it. If it ever becomes political and used as a repressive tool of government, we’ll have quite a lot to worry about over a simple game of Angry Birds.